Solitary Confinement
by lalalei
Summary: "Welcome to your new home, Seto Kaiba. A place of solitude and seclusion." Imprisoned in Pegasus's soul card, deep in the darkness of the Shadow Realm, Kaiba struggles to escape-if he can. Having your soul shredded if you linger too long means time is limited...


The first sensation that greeted Seto Kaiba was a feeling of heaviness. He opened his eyes slowly, with practiced timing, so as to not be caught off-guard by blinking. Precision was his way of life.

He was lying facedown in a darkened room with no windows and no other occupants. Despite the lack of light fixtures or even a doorway, there was enough light, somehow, for him to be able to see. It appeared to be a dungeon of some kind.

Kaiba moved to pick himself up and immediately groaned in pain, feeling weak in a way he couldn't describe. It was nothing like mere tiredness, or even exhaustion. It was as if his entire being was somehow weighted down, and he could sense that no matter how weary he felt, he would never be able to sleep—not even passing out from fatigue.

The last thing he remembered was losing to Pegasus and seeing the man hold up a card he hadn't used in the duel. Then the Millennium Eye had blinded him with its light, and…nothing, until now.

Kaiba struggled to remember what it was Pegasus had said just before he'd woken up here. His memories seemed foggy, in a haze, and nothing came to him at first.

Then he remembered. "This is the final fate of your _soul_, Seto Kaiba!"

_How ludicrous_, Kaiba thought. Even if his soul _was_ trapped here… no prison was inescapable. It stood to reason that if there was a way into this place, there was a way out. All that was needed was to find it.

Seto Kaiba stood on shaky legs—inwardly cursing himself for such weakness—and examined his surroundings more carefully, starting with the wall immediately behind him. It was featureless and dusty, looking as if it hadn't been occupied for a very long time. The ceiling was too high for him to reach from where he stood, and there were no handholds to climb to make it so. The other three walls, as well as the floor, were much the same.

Frustrated at his inability to see a way out, Kaiba pressed an ear against the south wall to listen for anything that might be outside. He heard something that sounded vaguely like rushing wind, but no voices. Invigorated at this discovery, he pressed, pulled, then finally scratched against the wall with a hand and succeeded in jostling loose a circular piece of stone. There was a hole just big enough to see out of if he held an eye to it.

Seto Kaiba looked through the small hole he had made and saw nothing he recognized of the world he had left behind. What he saw appeared to be an endless field of stars across an infinite blue space. There was nothing else that he could see; no ground, no sun, not even a landmark to tell where in this vast plane his prison was. Kaiba drew back from the hole, bewildered, and in that instant the wall congealed and closed itself as if it was never broken to begin with. He cursed and sought the small stone he'd knocked loose, only to find that had disappeared as well.

_Well. West wall, then_. He examined it with more caution than the first, and was startled to realize this time he heard a voice beyond it. It sounded like laughter, the laughter of Pegasus's Bickuribox—the demented jester on a spring that had sliced his Dark Clown to ribbons with a scythe. Kaiba withdrew, but the laughter only increased in volume and was soon mixed with other voices. They sounded like Pegasus's Toon monsters, cackling at his inability to make sense of the place, and in a moment they were joined by the cruel, mocking laughter of Maximillion Pegasus himself.

"_Enough_," Kaiba growled, speaking for the first time since his imprisonment. The taunting ceased at once, but echoes of it remained and reverberated around the room before fading. He made a mental note to not approach that side of the room again.

He was about to examine the other walls when chains sprung up from the ceiling and wrapped around him, despite there being nothing to support their existence before. They immediately retracted, binding him to the ceiling in seconds—which, he realized, wasn't a ceiling at all anymore but a blank, featureless slab of some kind. The slab turned on its end, the room itself crumbled away, and he was facing outward into the vast, empty void he'd glimpsed briefly before.

This world, Kaiba decided, made no sense.

Realizing that freeing himself from the chains would only send him hurling into the abyss of stars, Kaiba turned to see if there was anything around him.

There _was _something else—but it was the last thing he wanted to see.

To his left was a slab, the same kind as his own. To the right was another. And on those other slabs were Solomon Muto and Mokuba Kaiba, each as chained and helpless as he was.

Kaiba ignored the old man for the moment and quickly suppressed any humiliation at his own situation. All that mattered was his brother's safety. "Mokuba," he shouted, his words sounding as if they were under glass, muffled somehow. "Can you hear me?"

Mokuba gave no response, but Seto could see him thrashing about, trying to free himself of the chains that held him. He could see him mouthing something that looked a lot like "Seto," followed by the more familiar term "big brother." This was followed by what was clearly his brother screaming for help.

"I'm here, Mokuba," Kaiba yelled, straining to be heard. "I won't let you down!"

Again, Mokuba gave no indication that he had heard his brother—and when Kaiba tried to speak again, his own screams cut off any words. An arc of black, cold lightning raced from Kaiba himself to the slab he was tied to, and he couldn't help but cry out in pain. It was like nothing he'd ever felt; for the seconds the energy raced through him and out of him, he felt like something was _eating_ at him and wouldn't be satisfied until he was completely gone.

Vision blurring, Kaiba saw, for just a moment, the glimmer of Pegasus's Millennium Eye. It seemed to be brighter than before, stronger somehow—as did the man himself.

When Kaiba was able to see again, he saw that both Solomon Muto and, more importantly, Mokuba, all seemed to be in the same state he was. The old man's entire _being_ was shaking and seemed to briefly shudder out of existence, and Mokuba furiously tried to wipe at his eyes with hands he no longer had the strength to lift.

Kaiba wanted to yell his brother's name again, but the experience left him beyond speaking—and there was a pulsing throb to his right hand that he couldn't ignore. Glancing down at his hand, he saw that it was scratched and bleeding—if you could call 'exuding nothingness' bleeding. In deeply cut areas he could even see _through_ his hand. He stared at the gashes in disbelief. If this was a prison for his soul, then what sense did it make for him to hurt, to bleed?

Slowly, the wounds patched together, but that in itself was much more painful than Seto Kaiba would have liked. As soon as they were completely healed, the chains released him and he fell back into the same prison room he'd been in before, cut off from the outside on all sides.

What worried Kaiba most at the moment was Mokuba. He had been here longer than Kaiba himself—while Solomon Muto's continued existence despite his long imprisonment gave him some comfort, Mokuba was also the smallest and youngest of them. Could he survive as long as they could? How long would it take until the wounds stopped healing? Just _being_ here had drained Kaiba himself, and with the added pressure on top of it…

As much as he hated to admit it, Seto Kaiba was afraid—not only for himself, but for his brother.

A nasal voice from behind interrupted his thoughts. "Enjoying your time in the Shadow Realm?"

Kaiba whirled—much more slowly than he would have liked to—and saw that the being that had spoken was a Witty Phantom, a creature said to preside over the doomed and already dead. The Dark-type Fiend leered at him and mockingly doffed his hat, which served to make him angrier.

"Shadow Realm," Kaiba asked, not in the least surprised by the Duel Monster's sudden appearance. He vowed to not be caught off-guard again. "What do you mean?"

The Phantom laughed in a manner that reminded Kaiba of Pegasus.

"Why, it's just what it sounds like! A place of shadows and torment. This dimension is where we Duel Monsters live and thrive, and where captured human souls—like you—are sent to rot. You'll be here for quite a long time, as will the old man—and your little brother."

Kaiba started at the mention of Mokuba, becoming alert in an instant. "Mokuba! Where is he? Tell me, Phantom, or Pegasus's soul won't be the _only_ one I'll rearrange when I'm done with him."

"Now, now, Seto Kaiba. There's no need for _violence_," the Witty Phantom taunted, lifting a gloved finger to quiet him. "Your brother is, shall we say, in a different department of the Shadow Realm, far from where anyone can reach him."

Kaiba bristled at that, but catalogued the information as the Phantom continued.

"_You_, dear boy, have been placed in solitary. No doors, no windows, no peace of mind. Nothing but your own unhappy self."

"Not quite as solitary with you here—though I'd have imagined Pegasus would have chosen better company than a Level 4 Fiend," Kaiba said with a grin. "Any one of my monsters in my deck could destroy _you_."

The Witty Phantom let out a low snicker. "I'm simply here to disavow you of the notion of escaping, Seto Kaiba. There are no locks to be picked, no hidden openings behind these walls, and _certainly_ no way to reach young Mokuba."

Kaiba faced the monster and clenched his fists. "We'll see if that's true when I _wring_ answers out of you."

"Oh, _please_, Kaiba. You're not even capable of helping yourself."

As if in response to the Fiend's words, the entire room shifted on its axis, sending Kaiba sprawling onto what had once been a wall. The Phantom remained where he was, and Kaiba got to his feet—and cried out as lightning of the same kind as before flowed from his body to the barriers of his prison. This time it was his other hand that bore the brunt of the damage, fingers and _pieces_ of fingers tapering off as if they no longer existed before painfully wrenching back into place.

To his credit, Seto Kaiba remained in control of himself enough to stop from falling to his knees in pain.

The Witty Phantom smirked. "Ah, did I mention? Too long in the Shadow Realm and your soul will be shredded to pieces. It's _quite_ painful, especially when your energy is used to power the Millennium Eye…but I don't need to _tell_ you that, do I?"

He tipped his hat. "Adieu, Seto Kaiba. I'll be sure to inform your brother of your imminent demise."

The Phantom departed with a laugh, leaving Seto Kaiba alone with his thoughts.

Kaiba was free to reflect on all his failures.

He'd failed to look after Mokuba. He'd failed to rescue him from the dungeon. Even when he had defeated Yugi—and _barely_, at that—he had then failed to defeat Pegasus. And now he had failed to find a way out of this prison of souls, even when his brother's life was at stake as well as his own.

To his chagrin, there was only one person he could think of who could help them now.

Kaiba turned to the walls and forced himself to speak, hoping his message would reach them.

"You had better defeat Pegasus, Yugi Muto. If you don't, _I'll_ be the one to shred your soul."


End file.
